Why Use Cygwin?

I have been a long time Putty user when logging from my Windows to GNU environments. It works great, but sometimes I just want the feel of a Native Command Line.

Enter Cygwin….

Cygwin is an open source tool that allows POSIX like environment naively from Windows. Cygwin runs on most Windows machines and is a distribution of GNU. Just like with Putty Cygwin allows for customization of the tool through themes. There are a few tricks to customizing the theme versus Putty that give developer/administrators more options. Let’s step through developing and changing the default theme in Cygwin.

Changing Themes in Cygwin

Step 1 Install Cygwin

Step 2 Install Mintty

Step 3 Open Cygwin Options

After installing go to Cygwin options – Looks. Go to the 4bit theme generator or select ‘Color Scheme Designer’ to be director to 4bit Theme generator. The theme generator allows you to use prebuilt schemes or create your own custom shell. For my environment I created a custom theme with a slightly dark purple background.

Here’s my custom Cygwin Theme

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BackgroundColour=15,0,51

ForegroundColour=217,230,242

CursorColour=217,230,242

Black=0,0,0

BoldBlack=38,38,38

Red=203,103,123

BoldRed=229,179,189

Green=123,203,103

BoldGreen=189,229,179

Yellow=203,183,103

BoldYellow=229,219,179

Blue=103,123,203

BoldBlue=179,189,229

Magenta=183,103,203

BoldMagenta=219,179,229

Cyan=103,203,183

BoldCyan=179,229,219

White=217,217,217

BoldWhite=255,255,255

Step 4 Download Or Copy .minttyrc

Once you have selected or developed your customer Cywin theme select the ‘Get Scheme’ button in top right. The file type you need to export is mintty (.minttyrc). If you have trouble getting the file to export just right click to open in new tab and copy the configurations.

Step 5 Overwrite Or Edit the .minttyrc file

Extremely important step and one that I always forget (which is the reason I created this post), where to edit theme file. If you download the .minttyrc file move and overwrite the file in the Cygwin64/home/[username] directory. Alternatively you can just edit the existing .minttyrc configuration file.

Awesome Themes

The ability to customize themes for your console is one of my favorite things versus staring at a generic white or black terminal. Use the 4bit Theme Generator to build your own custom theme or search around to find one that suits your style. Post screen shots of your terminal in the comments below. I’d love to see what other developers/administrators are using.

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OneFS offers many options to customize replication policies using SyncIQ. In this episode of Isilon Quick Tips we walk through those options in deep dive into SyncIQ.

Transcript

hello and welcome back to another episode of ISILON on quick tips today we’re going to talk about SyncIQ and we’re going to go a little bit deeper than we have in the past the SyncIQ so before it was all about just setting up a one-time replication now let’s talk about some of the options and how we can really customize are seeking jobs so what we’re going to do is I’m going to swing over to policies and we look at a policy of already got created i’m just going to edit that policy that policy is my home shares and so this is all my corporate home directories here in Huntsville and this is something that I’m replicating to my secondary cluster so the first thing i want to talk about I want to talk about some of the differences between copy and synchronization copy is just when you’re specifically moving data from one directory to another directory you’re not caring about if the date has been deleted or if the data is merged so when you’re synchronizing that’s going to be different because synchronizing is actually going to keep your primary cluster and your secondary cluster in sync so a file has been moved to another directory inside of that directory will be replicated that way in your secondary cluster and so will delete if you have a file has been deleted your primary once the scene job completes it will be deleted on your secondary cluster as well some of the areas you would use these is if you want to have a backup of your data but you don’t want to sink it or maybe there’s certain directors you want to pull out that you want to have all of those copy that’s typically when you’re going to see them but most cases you’re going to use the synchronization so in our run job or run job is our option of windows is dropping around so we want to sync you know this is our SyncIQ policy when they’re going to kick off you have a couple different options the one we did before was our manual so that just saying hey you know just going to manually push the button and every time i do that i’m going to sink my going to start that state policy then you also have the option to do it on schedule this is the most common one used so this is says hey you know two times a day three times a day you can set it up however you want that you’re going to set a schedule that you know the state is going to be replicated you know let’s say you do at six in the morning then six in the afternoon you know you doing a weekly monthly or yearly basis another common way to run these is whenever sources modified and so you can have a source of this modified so you know think about if you move a file if you delete a fall anything like that any changes to that directory it’s going to go ahead and modify the source you do have to set a time frame around that so let’s say that you modify a file how fast you want that see you can send delay to happen a few different seconds minutes hours or days so you can say hey you know every time some modified let’s wait a few minutes and then go ahead and never replicated over and then you can also have it set up where whenever a snapshot of the source directory is taken that’s going to run that the state policy job to setting the source directory is very simple right so what directory or want to move in this case i’m moving all my data that’s in ifs is my source directory the cool thing is where you can really customize this job is not only were sent in from different directories or also can include directories or exclude directories you can come in and say hey you know all the directories under data i’m only going to move over RI salon support or you know I’m only one will move over my easy gather / or i can exclude directories and say you know what move everything that’s in data but these two directories here I salon support a nice long gather those are all administrative things that you know not really trying to replicate over the change in a lot there’s not any data in there that’s not recoverable don’t replicate those so that just gives you a lot more control so you can set you said something at a high level in the tree and then only replicate the times that you want to in that tree and not have to worry about okay you have to set up you know 15 different policies because I’ve got different datasets now you can still come back and set one or two policies to replicate over the data and then we talk about some of these advanced settings so you can actually set a priority on this and you can take it from you know a normal default policy or you can have always have it but this specific policies always going to be high level and never just make sure that that priority has been lifted on this job here and also you can set a limit on how long you’re going to keep the reports from these jobs because you know depending on how often these jobs running you start to have a lot of reports and so you have that option there let’s cancel out of this and I’m going to close out i will show you one more thing so we’re talking about setting up those on modified depending on how often those files change that’s how much bandwidth is going to go over your network so if you have some performance concerns about how often or how much data is being problem across you can actually set of performance role in these jobs and so one of the cool things that I really like about it is you can set it on a schedule so you say hey you know I really want to replicate this anytime my name is modified but there are certain business our times maybe or certain times certain days of the week that I’m really want to throttle back and say hey you know what it’s not as a bigger problem during this time you know the rest of the week let’s go ahead and have it you know open throttle there and so you can set a schedule man you can even set some bandwidth rules around the limitations and so you can kinda throttle back saying hey you know always want to be modifying that data but let’s just set a performance rule about how much bandwidth can be taken up and so that’s just a deeper dive on CQ and so you can really see how you can customize and design those same policies to fit whatever kind of rules that you want to have for replicating your data between your eyes on clusters thanks for taking the time to watch and i hope you’ll join me for another episode of ISILON on quick tips

Not a week can go by without a data breach. We can now add Anthem Healthcare to the list. The White House announced this week a plan for a E-gov Cyber division. In 2015 we will continue to see the government taking cyber security seriously.

Just for Fun

For the past 2 weeks I’ve tried to find the Fibit Charge HR and for the last 2 weeks they have been sold out. Hopefully I will find one somewhere this weekend.

Are you ready for some footbaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllll?

Superbowl Sunday is right around the corner and this week’s edition of Best of the Web is sure to be just as thrilling.

Shocking News

So let me get this straight Google delays Google Glass while Microsoft creates quite a buzz with their Hololens announcement? I would have liked to seen the Vegas odds on that happening. But with the success of the Microsoft Kinect this is a natural progression.

Just In Case

Change the way I drive

I might be late to the party on the Waze app but I am loving this App. I just downloaded it this week after a co-worker was telling me about it. So far I really like the app and found it really accurate even for smaller metropolitan areas.

A lot of products on the list this week. Below is a picture of our record .25 snow this week…..oh and some great links:

If you have a need to create screencast, you know the software you are using can speed up your workflow. Camtasia is an amazing tool. It is pricey at 300 for the PC version but worth it. They do run a 30 day free trial but after the 30 days I was hooked.

While you are making screencast you will need a good microphone. Let me repeat that, you need a good microphone to make screencasts. I really like the Blue Microphones and have both a Yeti and Snowball. We use the Yeti at work in our conference room and I have a snowball at home. The Snowball is a great entry microphone at $50 and the one I use for screencasting.

In a meeting this week there was a discussion about using Discourse for a project I might be working on. While I had not heard of it, after some research I realized I had seen it used on many sites. Discourse is a new forum/discussion platform and is opensource. I can’t wait to start playing with it.

During the past year I have gotten into the cloud computing on a small scale. Microsoft Azure has an awesome 30 day trial which I ended up keeping the service after that. In the next few months I will post some tutorials on using Azure.

January is normally the time of year people begin to focus back on their health. My wife has been talking about Sworkit since this summer and this week I finally downloaded it. Wow it was a really good workout. Sworkit is available in Google Play and App Store. If you are using the app on iPhone it integrates with iOs Health.

During the past week I have spent way too much time on Wareables.com. If you researching any wearable technology be sure to check out their reviews. Just this week rumors were out that Apple will release the iWatch in March.

Great book from John Sonmez titled Soft Skills. I purchased the book through Mannings MEAP program but it was just released for the public in the last week. Soft Skills is a macro-level look at the soft-skills software developers should learn for a successful career/life. Even though book is targeted for developers the same approach could be applied to any profession. Must read for anyone.

While we are talking about books to read, here is a post from Pat Flynn for a couple of more I will be reading in 2015. Smartcuts by Shane Snow is the first one off the list I will be reading.

And if you are already working on your soft skills don’t forget about your charisma. We could all improve our likability.

Jeremy Jarrell released “Agile in the Real World” on Pluralsight. I’ve watched about half of the modules and really thought it was great.

The talk around the web in December was mostly about the Sony hack. Sometimes we forget how vulnerable our computer systems are to attack but just in case check this evil USB necklace. As developers I have become numb to the security hacks because they always seem to involve a big company. The reality is we are all under attack daily even if it’s not by a USB necklace.

Since the new year it’s a great time to read up on IT predictions for 2015. Here are few that caught my attention: